bioephemera | November 11, 2008
This forensics van enthusiastically wields the scientific method against all threats. Watch out, criminals - Science will get ya!
bioephemera | November 9, 2008
What is this?
A. The escape response of the smallest known cephalopod
B. A recently auctioned photo series by Man Ray
C. A fungus launching its high-speed spore
D. Latex squirting from an opium poppy pod
E. A medical nanodevice deploying into the bloodstream
Answer below the fold. . .
Well, this reminds me of the primitive, strangely organic black-and-white F/X from Georges Meliers' classic 1902 film La Voyage Dans La Lune, in which humanity's first spacecraft blasts off, only to smack the hapless Man in the Moon in the eye!
You don't agree? Well, it is a blastoff - in fact, it's the…
bioephemera | November 7, 2008
One of the odder perks of living in DC is viewing the strange Metro ads purchased by various lobbying blocs. Here, a rosy-cheeked child sucks down pasta, while the ad proudly tells us the main ingredient is fertilizer. Yum, yum.
bioephemera | November 6, 2008
From NPR: The staff at a German aquarium trained 6-month old Otto the octopus to aim and squirt water at targets. It was all fun and games for awhile, but then the devious cephalopod turned his powers against his captors, squirting the lights in his enclosure and repeatedly shorting out the aquarium's electrical system. Bwahahaha, take that, foolish humans!
Haven't these people read Lovecraft?
Complete podcast here.
bioephemera | November 6, 2008
Onlookers filed past the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue Wednesday night, viewing approximately 80 front pages from U.S. and world newspapers - all of which paid tribute to President-elect Barack Obama.
Related:
Useful Post-Election Links
Wow.
bioephemera | November 5, 2008
"Each face is made of approximately 150 million tiny carbon nanotubes; that's about how many Americans voted on November 4."
Carbon nanotube/silicon sculptures by MIT mechanical engineer Anastasios John Hart. More at nanobama and nanobliss.
In late 2005, Hart started experimenting with sculpting carbon nanotubes, one-atom-thick sheets of graphite (called graphene) rolled up into a seamless cylinder with a diameter of 1 nanometer. Because carbon nanotubes grow on a silicon substrate, he says, he began to sculpt them by altering the shape or thickness of the substrate. Hart also has learned…
bioephemera | November 5, 2008
"While the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.' And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn -- I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."
bioephemera | November 5, 2008
I expected that by now, last night's events would have sunk in. They haven't. So I've spent the morning cruising the intertubes.
DC's Newseum archives the front pages of major newspapers across the country - you can see their gallery of front pages here today, and can search for Nov. 5 at later dates. However, the intertubes seem clogged this morning, so you may have better luck loading the gallery slideshow of the best-designed front pages, put together by Robb Montgomery. He also includes international papers.
The full text of Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago is here.
The full…
bioephemera | November 4, 2008Okay. . . my mom has been campaigning for Obama, and she sent me a great "Science for Obama" button. It morphs the features of Einstein with those of Obama.
Unfortunately, it was pointed out to me tonight that this unnatural union yields. . . Al Sharpton.
Agh!!!!!
(I took this photo myself just now - no Photoshop, I swear!)
bioephemera | November 4, 2008
Where do you suppose this photo was taken?
A. It's a false-color representation of the surface of a meteorite.
B. It's a 100x enlargement of the surface of a shark tooth.
C. It's crystals of an anti-cancer drug.
D. It's the "teeth" on a butterfly wing.
Answer below the fold. . .
The answer is (C). This is a 10x polarized light image of mitomycin, taken by Margaret Oeschli at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. It won 7th place in the 2008 Nikon Small World Competition.
Mitomycin structure (from Wikipedia)
Mitomycin C (also called mutamycin) is an antitumor antibiotic which…
bioephemera | November 3, 2008Duke's behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of "Predictably Irrational" and founder of MIT's Center for Advanced Hindsight, was in DC for a talk today. He is a damn entertaining speaker. For example, his advice on wingmen/women: "If you ever go bar-hopping, who do you want to take with you? A slightly uglier version of yourself." If his book is as good as his talk, it's well worth reading.
But what everyone really wants to know is how our irrationality will impact tomorrow's election, and that's where the Q&A went. Unfortunately, Ariely suggested that despite recent reports of its…
bioephemera | November 3, 2008In the current New Yorker, Margaret Talbot summarizes the gaping chasm in attitudes toward teenage sex in Red and Blue America:
Social liberals in the country's "blue states" tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter's pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in "red states" generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn't choose to have an…
bioephemera | November 2, 2008
This is for all those people who wonder why I rave endlessly about Portland, Oregon.
From ahp_ibanez' flickr stream via signal vs. noise (they have some good stuff over there!).
Note: Yes, you purists, I am aware the Pound reference is Chinese. ;)
bioephemera | November 2, 2008Very cool:
These rock sculptures are pure ephemera, lasting only hours or days before the surf knocks them down. But sculptor Kent Avery doesn't see it as futile - even when the nascent sculptures fall on him, or onlookers object to their "unnatural" state.
Via signal vs. noise.
bioephemera | October 30, 2008I can't freehand a parallelogram to save my life, but I can bisect an angle with the best of 'em! Woohoo!
How good are you at eyeballing geometry? Test yourself with this game. It's addictive, although your eyes will tire quickly if you have an inferior monitor. And at the end, it gives you a snazzy little readout of your scores, like this:
bioephemera | October 30, 2008stag beetle
Albrecht Durersource
... But life in nature manifests the truth of these things.... Therefore observe it diligently, go by it and do not depart from nature arbitrarily, imagining to find the better by thyself, for thou wouldst be misled. For, verily, "art" is embedded in nature; he who can extract it has it. -- Albrecht Durer
Thanks to your generosity, yet another of my DonorsChoose projects has been funded! Woot! And several very generous donors who have given in the three digits, with the leader at $300. That means to have a shot at the original watercolor, you'd have to give…
bioephemera | October 29, 2008
I was meme-tagged a while ago by Thomas at Medical Museion, and I never got around to responding, because I was incapacited by indecision! The meme (which originated with Arte y Pico) requires that I recommend five inspiring blogs to my readers. That's harder than it sounds - there are so many more than five inspiring blogs (just look at my growing blogroll!) and most of my favorites have a lot of fans already.
But since this is a chance to recommend some excellent non-Sb blogs, which may have fewer readers than they deserve, here are my five nominees. If you like my blog, you'll likely…
bioephemera | October 29, 2008The Editors of SEED just officially endorsed Barack Obama:
Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world.…
bioephemera | October 29, 2008
De prospectiva pingendi, Book 3, figure lxivPiero della Francesca (c 1412-92)
This month's Lancet has an interesting article by G.D. Schott, linking Piero della Francesca's pioneering orthographic projections to technologies like fMRI:
In the neurosciences today, images of the brain and its constituent structures are typically presented in the triadic orthogonal format, comprising coronal, sagittal, and axial projections. Less commonly, rotated or tilted projections are used. But our forebears are easily forgotten, and here I suggest that the contemporary way in which brain images are…
bioephemera | October 27, 2008
Care to guess what this is?
A. a dragonfly wing.
B. a solar panel array.
C. winter fields in the mountains of Thailand.
D. a gecko foot.
E. the award-winning roof of a new modern art museum in Seattle.
Answer below the fold. . .
Yes, it's a dragonfly wing. (I had to smudge out the scale bar on this one to keep it from being too easy.)
I was impressed by how, at a quick glance, this image was devoid of scale indicators - I really did think it was a macroscopic image of a landscape, or some kind of sculpture. And although I've looked at dragonfly wings under a dissection microscope, and I've…